


Tuesday Afternoon

by rufeepeach



Series: Time Of Day [7]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-06-06 10:38:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6750502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rufeepeach/pseuds/rufeepeach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They just wanted to have sex after a horrible day, but in the end she is telling him about her mother’s death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tuesday Afternoon

Moe is being an asshole.

Belle stopped thinking of her father as ‘papa’ right around the time he was attaching a lock to her door so that he could keep her inside. She was fifteen, and clambering down the tree to the back garden when she first thought 'Moe’s a bastard’.

She still usually calls him 'papa’ to his face, of course, but the title implies a certain respect which, though it breaks her heart, Belle cannot afford to the man who ostensibly raised her.

He’s bad tempered, controlling, and petty. And he never remembers to pay the rent.

Mr Gold sent Dove around, thankfully, rather than coming himself. Belle remembers the last time she had to face off to her sometime-lover over the shop’s debts, and since then she’s been a little more careful to avoid bringing their personal issues into the open. Business and pleasure, as they say shouldn’t mix, especially when both are intimately entwined with Gold.

Belle still has the wad of 'cab faire’ money he gave her last week after she left his home late, and she’s starting to wonder if he didn’t plan for her to have it now, when Moe cannot cough up the last hundred dollars he owes from the till. She presents it to Dove with a tight smile, and a “Sorry about this, Mr Dove, you know how it is.”

Dove smiles - Belle doesn’t know, doesn’t want to know, how much the hired hand is aware of her relationship to his boss, but it’s a kind smile he gives her - and inclines his head. “Thank you Miss French. My employer is always regretful when it has to come to unpleasantness.”

“Your employer can stick his regrets where the sun don’t shine,” Moe mutters, bitterly. Belle glares at the bowed back of his head.

“I hope we won’t have to do this again,” she chirps, apologetically, “have a lovely day, Mr Dove!”

Dove nods back, and leaves. Moe rounds on Belle.

“What was that then?”

Belle flinches back, but does not retreat. “What was what?”

“You have money now?” he asks.

“I had some cash around, and helped with the rent,” she says, slowly. “It made him go away.”

“Oh, that it did,” Moe nods, incensed and shaking, “This is my shop, my girl,  _my_  business. You’ve no place swanning in there and humiliating me!”

“ _I_ humiliated _you_?” she laughs, scornfully, “Fucking hell, dad! You blew all the money at the Rabbit Hole again, don’t even try to deny it!”

“Don’t you use that language with me-”

“Oh, don’t start,” she snaps. “I did you a favour. It’s my home too, you know, and i don’t want it taken away anymore than you do.”

“Where did you get a hundred dollars?”

“I saved,” she lies, “it’s a concept you might have to grasp at some point.”

She spins on her heel and throws off the stupid Game of Thorns cap he makes her wear. “What are you doing?” he demands. She turns back to him, angrily, as she tears at the laces that hold her apron on and throws that down as well. She grabs her jacket and bag from the back stairs, and stares him down.

“I’m taking a day off,” she replies, icily, proud of her calm in the face of the raging anger inside her. “You should recognise it, you take enough.”

“If you don’t stop right now you’re fired!” he threatens.

“Ha! Come on, Moe, you can’t find anyone else willing to work for half of minimum wage and whatever shit food is in the fridge. I’ll be home when I’m home. Don’t try to call me.”

She marches out, and gets halfway down the street and around the corner before she breaks down sobbing.

She keeps walking, slower now, around corners and down streets, blind and uncaring of her destination. She walks down Main, past Granny’s, down Fifth and through the park, and she knows where she’s going before she gets there. The grass is springier, here, up on the hill, and the same bench in the same place, where she always sits, where no one else seems to even come. Maybe she’s the only one who cares, anymore.

It’s a half hour before she gets back up, wipes away her tears, and keeps walking.

She ought to have known she’d end up at Gold’s ridiculously salmon-pink house, although she rarely comes here in the light of day. She knows the route by heart, and it’s her heart that’s leading her there. The rest of her sure as hell isn’t functioning.

She finds the spare key in the front garden - he has a weird little waterwheel ornament out front, and the key’s under the water, so her hand gets wet but she doesn’t care - and lets herself in. She toes off her shoes in the hallway, and settles herself on his sofa.

She’ll leave before he gets back, but being here feels rebellious, the knowledge that she alone knows where Gold keeps the spare key, that she alone can use it and know she won’t end up in Sheriff Swan’s holding cell. It would drive Moe crazy, to know where she is, and why she’s here.

She’s not going home anytime soon, so she makes herself comfy, takes off her tights and lets down her hair, and gets out her book.

—

Gold decides to close up early, when he sees Moe French storm past his shop window. He doesn’t come in - the cursed Lord is too scared for all that - but he looks like he’s fuming, and Dove gave Gold a full report upon his return from the French residence.

Belle may want to talk, this evening. She’s more likely to want to use her mouth for something else.

Rumpelstiltskin was always selfish, and twenty-eight years have yet to strip Gold of that same defect. He goes home because it’s further from her home, and there’s less likelihood then of him breaking his own rules. In this time, and this place, he cannot rush to her side and make everything better. He has to sit back, and be careless with the one thing in this whole godforsaken town he wishes to protect.

He arrives home, and his heart breaks in his chest.

For there, sprawled on his sofa with her feet up, face in a book and purple and silver skirt riding up her thighs, lies Belle, peacefully, as if she has always belonged there. As if they are an item, married and living together, and he could naturally just walk across to her, and kiss her forehead, and they’d make dinner together and maybe watch a movie. Like a normal couple.

But they are not a couple, and it would be the worst kind of stupidity to start acting like one now, when he’s worked so hard and broken so many precious little things to keep them safe.

“I don’t believe today is one of ours,” he drawls, and watches as she drops her book on her chest, and stares at the ceiling. He comes over to watch her, hands braced on the sofa back, and smirks down at her.

“Dad’s a dick,” she says, and he laughs.

“What did he do this time?” he asks, although there’s a clench of fear in his gut, because what if Moe French knows about their relationship? Regina’s lie is exposed by the very presence of the girl before him, but Gold still sees scourges and flaying behind his eyes.

“He got pissed because Dove wanted paying, and I paid him - I’ll pay you back the hundred, by the way, cause it’s not fair you get paid in your own money - and dad felt humiliated. Like he’s not done that to himself already, dragging that fat arse of his all over town and not paying his debts.”

That’s one thing that is notably different about this cursed Belle from the woman he loved in the Enchanted Forest: she is bitter, and it runs deep. This woman has been betrayed by her father a hundred times, and she is angry, angrier than his Belle ever could have been. He hates that he almost enjoys it, because it means that they match: his bitterness runs deep too.

“Forget the money, pet,” he waves it aside, and ignores the surprise on her face. “I’ll take you as payment over the rent any day,” he adds, with a roguish wink, and watches the hurt and arousal in equal measure play over her face. 

She settles on a wry smile, “I’m not sleeping with you to pay my father’s debts.”

“And I’ll not be paid in flesh,” he replies, “but it’s easier for me if you have a roof over your head. One must have priorities, after all.”

“Indeed,” she smiles, and they understand each other, despite it all. He comes around to sit beside her on the sofa, and she simply stretches, lazily, catlike, and makes herself comfortable.

“Now,” he murmurs, running a hand over her side and watching her eyes follow it, “This is interesting.”

“Is it now?” she teases, “In what way?”

“This dress is clingier than usual,” he says, plucking at the smooth fabric, “and lower cut.”

“I was hoping you’d come to collect the rent,” she says, softly. “I thought I could con you into meeting a few days early. You know dad being a dick makes me antsy.”

“And I have the cure for that,” he purrs, and leans in close, bracketing her face with his arms.

“Make a comment about an injection, and I will kill you with your own damn cane,” she whispers, and he laughs, because he will never love anything so much as he loves her smile, and her sense of humour. Even the Curse couldn’t rob her of those.

“Well I have been feeling a little peaky,” he admits, “you’ll kiss it better, won’t you dear?”

She groans, and rolls her eyes, but leans up to kiss him anyway, and the soft, tender thing it starts as soon turns heated. Soon he is braced on his elbows, plundering her mouth, and she has her hands buried in his hair.

His hand slides down her side to the hem of her dress, and starts to push it up her thigh, teasing the soft skin beneath. Her tights are on the floor by his feet, and her skin is very soft and very smooth.

“Do you want to do this now?” he asks, breathlessly, when they part. She nods, urgently, and squirms underneath him.

He smiles, but not too brightly, because something dark and sad has settled in Belle’s eyes, and sadness doesn’t belong there. He doesn’t want to take advantage, not if she’s hurting. He’ll distract her, of course, and happily so, but only if that’s what she needs.

“Why?”

“Ugh, because I had a bad day and a screaming orgasm will take the edge off,” she replies, and he knows she likes to shock him with bluntness and obscenity but he can see through her brittle bluster, and there’s something she isn’t telling him. 

“You always have a hard time with your father,” he notes, “I’d hate to think you’d be the victim of something so cliched as 'daddy issues’.”

She makes a face at him, “Everyone has issues with their parents.”

“You only talk about your father,” he notes.

“And then only because I still have to live with the lazy asshole,” she mutters, and tries to kiss him again. He evades her grasping hands, and she sighs. “What do you want from me? Because I’m literally asking for it here.”

“I want to know why you look like you just came back from a funeral,” he tells her, bluntly. “I don’t think sex will help if you start sobbing halfway through.”

“Yeah, crying’s a real mood killer, can’t have that,” she murmurs, and her hands reach down to straighten her skirt as she sits up a little higher, and he moves to accommodate her. He scoots back, and somehow her legs end up on his lap. He caresses her calves, absently, and she sighs. “It’s none of your business.”

“Then take your legs off my lap, and go home,” he challenges, gently. He doesn’t want her to leave, not now or ever again, but he also knows this girl, this new cursed Belle who hasn’t her old bravery, nor her former sense of self. This Belle needs a push to do what she needs to do, and that’s what Gold can always provide: incentive. “Otherwise, start talking.”

“You’re a bastard,” she tells him, and he smiles.

“It has been said,” he admits. “Now, what happened? What _really_ happened?”

She sigs, “I went to my mother’s grave,” she admits, at last, finally. His heart sinks: of all the cruel games Regina could play, she had to kill Belle’s mother in this world as well, and make it hurt her still. “My dad was better with her around. Happier. He called her his little fairy because she was tiny like me, and blonde, and used to flit around the house and make everything brighter.”

“You died your hair blonde,” he notes, “a few months back.”

She touches her chestnut curls, “Yeah, I wanted to see if I could be more like her if I looked like her, you know? Maybe then… I don’t know, maybe i thought it’d make dad better. It didn’t work. Anyway, I went to see her. And it made me remember a load of stuff, like how I didn’t used to hate home and Moe and how he used to be kind, and I guess it just put me in a bad mood. I’m sorry I’m not good for you today.”

“Belle, I’m no good for you any day, you’re allowed at least one,” he teases, and she nods, smiling, despite looking a little tearful.

“I suppose.”

“And then you came here,” he says, awed by the sentiment of that, by what it means. Will this happen in every world they find themselves in? Will she always run from her father, and mourn her mother, and end up in his arms?

“And then I came here,” she returns. “Yes.”

They sit in silence a long time, and her head ends up on his shoulder, and her knees across his lap, and his arm around her waist. They sit that way until the sun starts to set, and no clothes are removed and no hands wander, and no one comments on how strange that is.

Finally, she makes to leave, and he hands her a twenty dollar bill for dinner at Granny’s and tells her that he’ll see her Sunday.

He doesn’t miss her grateful beam, nor the warmth of the kiss she gives him, nor the doting smile he returns to her. On Sunday, he’ll call her a slut and tie her up and spank her, and things will return to normal. But for now, he calls her his sweetheart, and she smiles a goodbye, and Gold watches her leave knowing that it couldn’t have happened any other way.


End file.
